Certain computing architectures use redundant switching to ensure reliable communication between a network and a plurality of processing nodes. Some systems may use a dual-star backplane for interconnecting processing nodes within the system. In Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture (ATCA), for example, there are two dual-star backplanes, which are called the Base and Fabric Ethernet interfaces. Such a topology provides a redundant Ethernet network for data path traffic, which passes between the switches and a plurality of node modules on the backplane. If one Ethernet network fails on the Base or the Fabric interface, the traffic is switched over to the other Ethernet network on the Base interface or the Fabric interface. However, there is no standard for system-level coordination of redundancy using this hardware based topology.
Redundancy methods based on messaging protocols generally have problems with latency and reliability. Typical redundancy methods such as multiple spanning tree protocol (MSTP) or other layer 2 protocols are difficult to configure, produce non-optimal forwarding paths, and result in slow failover times.